Your letter operated well. Like a good boy I began my task immediately after its arrival, & have now compleated one
part, & begun the second of a poem which is to consist of three. Can you give me a better title than Carmen
Maritale? [1] I distrust my own Latinity, which has long been disused & never was very good. The poem is in six lined stanzas, –
first a Proem, so called rather than Introduction, that the antiquated word may put the reader in tune for what follows. the
It is a poets egotism, making the best of the laurel, & passing to the present subject by professing {at first} an unfitness
for it. the second part will be a vision wherein allegorical personages give good advice, – & the concluding part a justification
of the serious strain which has been chosen, – something about the King, [2] & a fair winding up with x a wish that it may be
long before the Princess be called upon to exercise the duties of which she has been here reminded. The whole from 3 to 400 lines, – on
which when they are compleated I will request you to bestow half an hours reading with a pencil in your hand.

The ground ice you have explained so clearly that I am half ashamed of not having thought upon the thing before I asked
a question about it. [3]

In George Gascoignes poem there are many things about the Dutch, showing that the English despised them & despaired
of their cause, – just as in our days happened to the Spaniards –

[1] Southey’s proposed poem on the marriage of Princess Charlotte Augusta
(1796–1817; DNB). The poem became The Lay of the Laureate. Carmen Nuptiale (1816), though it
celebrated the Princess’s marriage to Leopold of Saxe-Coburg (1790–1865; DNB) and not the Hereditary Prince of
Orange, William (1792–1849; King of the Netherlands 1840–1849), whose engagement to Princess Charlotte was broken off in June
1814. BACK

[2] George III (1738–1820;
King of the United Kingdom 1760–1820; DNB). BACK

[5] The Army of Silesia, a joint Prussian and Russian force, was defeated by
Napoleon at Champaubert (10 February 1814), Montmirail (11 February 1814) and Vauchamps (14 February 1814), but still managed to win
a decisive victory at Laon (9–10 March 1814). Meanwhile, the Austrian Army of Bohemia was notably inactive. Negotiations with France
continued at Chaumont throughout February-March 1814. Nevertheless, the allies entered Paris on 30 March 1814. BACK